I stood at the edge of everything, just out of reach of the canopy, and had to remind myself that I was still in the desert, watching this Martian circus come alive before me in the dead of winter. Part of me found it ridiculous, like the rest of the city, while another part of me wanted nothing more than to dive into all that lurid revelry and drown myself.
Some joker in a Santa hat, wearing only a T-shirt and cargo shorts, went skipping around and tapping everyone with a giant candy cane like it was a magic wand. He came close and I saw his bleary eyes, and he slurred at me through his bushy red beard, “Merry fucking Christmas, man!” When his cane tapped my shoulder, it felt like a blessing.
I finally heard the cell phone ringing at my breast and hurried to an empty wall outside the mall to escape the clamor. I had already missed three calls.
“Yes,” I said into the phone, covering my other ear.
“I thought you were ignoring me.” It was Victor. “Where are you going?”
“Nowhere. This was the only way I could get you to call me. Listen — I need Happy’s phone number.”
“You know I can’t give you that.”
“Why not?”
“Stay at the hotel, Officer, and wait things out until tomorrow morning. We went over this. That’s the only way you’re ever leaving this city.”
I was making my way back to the Coronado. “I’m not going anywhere. Mai just left with the money and is headed out of town as we speak. She has a safe place to go. All I’m asking now is to speak to Happy. One quick conversation.”
“That’s not gonna happen.”
“Victor—”
“Goodnight, Officer.”
“Victor, hold on. Why did Suzy wait four days to give Mai this money? Four days she sticks around town when she knows Sonny’s after her. What was she doing all that time?”
“You got to stop. Put this all behind you.”
“And why didn’t she just bring the money to Mai’s apartment? Why go through all the trouble of leaving it here for her — in that specific room?”
Victor was silent.
“Are you there?” I said, nearly shouting over the thousand voices behind me singing “Jingle Bell Rock.”
“I don’t have any answers for you.”
“Well, if you don’t, then Happy’s all I got.”
I was back in the Coronado and the new quiet of singing slot machines. I lowered my voice. “Mai just left town with a load of your boss’s money. I can’t keep her safe if I don’t know everything Suzy did to steal it for her. You understand? Victor?”
He finally spoke up, muttering Happy’s phone number with quiet reluctance. “If you take another step outside the casino tonight,” he warned me, “I’ll have no choice.”
I RETURNED TO my room for the duffel bag I’d dropped off, then went back next door to 1215. What Mai had said — that someone had been in the room — still troubled me. Not that I believed her, but that same hush used to pass across her mother’s face every now and then, like she had seen or heard something I could not.
I checked the room more carefully this time, even getting on my knees to inspect the carpet. Nothing peculiar finally except a whiff of sweetness in the air which I hadn’t noticed until then, like that smell in my apartment from a few days before.
A thought startled me and I searched my pockets for my badge. I rummaged through my duffel bag for a few minutes before finally remembering that Mai still had it. She had forgotten to give it back. I couldn’t think of why I’d need the badge at this point, but having it stripped from me made me feel like a shade of my former self, lighter but also less substantial.
I shook it off and sat down beside the telephone on the nightstand.
Happy’s phone rang six times. I hung up, waited a minute, and tried again. This time, on the fourth ring, she picked up. Her hello sounded small, distant.
“It’s Bob,” I said. “What took you so long to answer?”
“I just get home. How you know this number?”
“We need to talk. Look, I know you didn’t give us the full story. I understand why, but I’ve sent Mai on her way. She’s probably already past the city limits. You can tell me now.”
“Bob—”
“Don’t deny it, okay? What else did Suzy want from you?”
“Bob. .” She uttered my name this time with pity and exhaustion in her voice.
“Happy, listen. . I was mean to you back at the apartment and I’m sorry. I don’t have any right to be angry. And everything that happened with us — I’m sorry about that too. I’ve been a mess ever since the divorce, you know that. But all this stuff in Vegas — I didn’t ask for any of it. I’m just trying to do the right thing, so please help me out here, okay? I deserve to know everything that happened.”
I could hear her breathing over the long silence that followed. Finally she said, “She give me a shoe box. It have the letters for Mai.”
“She wanted you to deliver them?”
“She want me keep them. If I hear something happen to her, only then I give them to Mai.”
“If something happens to her?”
“I don’t know, Bob. I not want to ask her that. She make me promise I not read them or give them to nobody.”
“Well Mai’s gone for good now. You won’t know where to send her the letters anyway.”
I could see Happy with her phone to her ear, staring at the wall, wondering what else she should tell me.
“I want to tell her at the apartment,” she said, “but I promise Suzy I not do nothing—”
“Yeah, until something happens to her. That could literally mean anything. Jesus, why does she talk this way?”
“What way?”
“Come on, you know. She used to talk like that to me all the time. Everything was like some fucking riddle. It was like she was constantly trying not to lie to me and not tell me the truth either.”
“But she not mean to.”
“Of course she did. She never trusted me, Happy. With anything.”
“She do. She marry you.”
It was the old Happy again, explaining the pain away, dismissing the truth to soften its blow. It surprised me, with everything that had happened between her and Suzy, that she could so easily slip back into this role.
“You know why she married me? I was safe. I was a dumb American who would take care of her. Do shit for her. Protect her from whatever.”
“Bob, why you say that? You know Suzy care for you.”
That was all she had for me, and it sounded for a moment like she didn’t believe it either. But when she spoke again, her voice was sad, almost a whisper: “She also write letter for you.”
When I didn’t respond, she went on, “She ask me keep it too. One day I send it to you.”
“You weren’t going to tell me this?”
“I promise her.”
“Happy, it might say where she’s going. I could help her — even save her life. You have it there at home with you?”
“No, Bob, you don’t come here.”
I squeezed the receiver tightly, then looked at the time. It was nearly nine. “I’m at the Coronado, Happy. I’m sitting in the same room Suzy went to every Thursday evening. I know she came here to write the letters. You can keep Mai’s, but please come bring me mine.”